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A good app for those who want to keep up to speed with the chat language that kids are using in their day-to-day conversations

What it is: Me On the Web is a new tool from Google.  Announced just today, Me On the Web is part of the Google Dashboard that allows you to set up custom Google Alerts for your name in news articles.  This was always possible with Google Alerts but now those alerts are coupled with tips and resources for helping students manage their online identities.  Now everything can be tracked from one central location instead of scattered around in different places.  Me On the Web is easy to set up, just visit your Google Dashboard to get started. How to integrate Me on the Web into the classroom: There was a day when you could get away with not knowing and following your digital identity, that day is no more.  We all carry digital footprints, and now more than ever it is vital for us (and our students) to know how to manage those digital footprints.  Teaching students about their digital identity is the first step, Google's Me on the Web takes that a step further by helping students manage their online identities through Google Alerts and helpful tips.  Students must have an account with Google to fully utilize the Me on the Web features.  After students have their account set up, they can create a set of Google Alerts related to them.  This could be their name, email address, a sports team that they play on, the name of the school they attend, etc.  Students will quickly see just how big a memory the Internet has and get a first hand look at their digital footprint and learn some strategies to take care of it.

This is a clever initiative by  google aimed at improving students' search skills. They have a question each day which requires a couple of google answers to find the correct answer. 

Want a fun way to help students practice and enhance their web research skills while discovering answers to trivia questions? Then check out "A Google A Day!"

is a good visual vocabulary site that offers students illustrations that help students understand vocabulary. One drawback is that it has limited vocabulary, however could be used to introduce the word of the day / week etc Approp for Stage 3 and up

In T4L the other day we talked about the guidelines for creating ePubs for through pages. This link has these and more! Great resource on ePubs. See highlighted section

NASA has an excellent interactive timeline tracing the history of astronomy and space exploration from the Greek philosophers through  the current day. Planet Quest is actually three timelines combined into one. The three timelines cover technology, discovery, and culture as it relates to astronomy and space exploration. Each element on the timeline is narrated. Users can select individual elements on the timeline or choose autoplay to hear the narration of each item in sequence.

An excellent presentation on wikis & writing and how they can be used to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. Also shares some meaningful stats regarding language development, explains and gives examples on web 1.0 & 2.0 tools and social media.

This blog entry links to an article which promotes the use of webcams for improving children's reading fluency etc. Interesting stuff! Link to article here: http://educationresearchreport.blogspot.com/2010/11/webcam-research-helps-kids-improve.html

This American ESL Teacher has created a list of re best sites for learning about the Australian floods. The list will be updated as he finds new resources and articles, and may be useful for your class?

With so much of the Northeastern Australian floods dominating the news at present- this site would be great for you to share with students when you begin the school year- some fantastic images to generating discussions around such a hot topic,

I am experiencing the floods first hand - am trapped in Toowoomba at present and taking lots of pictures/video....scary stuff...

Some interesting websites on this list for consuming the news in various visual formats - worth a look!

Great resources on the timely topic of Osama bin Laden